Article - July 26, 2008 - Lynchburg News and Advance

UVa opens dialysis center in Altavista

By Cynthia Pegram

ALTAVISTA — When Carl Wilson gets finished with dialysis, he’s home in 10 minutes.

But until 2008, Wilson traveled 41 miles every three days from his home near Altavista to the Uva Dialysis Center in Lynchburg. And after each four-hour treatment he was back on the road again.

“I live 11 miles south of Altavista,” Wilson said. “It was 82 miles a day.”

He doesn’t have to do that any more.

Wilson, 74, was a leader in helping draw attention to the need for a UVa Altavista Dialysis center. In 2006, he began getting signatures for a petition, ignored the people who said it wouldn’t do any good, tracked down other dialysis patients and interested non-patients, and sent the petition off to the University of Virginia, which owned the Lynchburg and Amherst facilities.

The 15-station center in downtown Altavista opened in the spring with two shifts a day, six days a week. On Monday, a third shift opens and the center will be in use from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. six days a week.

“I feel like I’m at home when I get out,” Wilson said, as he was undergoing dialysis last week. “Lynchburg is good — wonderful doctors and wonderful nurses,” he said. “I love them all. But to do this, I got to be closer to home.”

UVa Altavista Dialysis is the newest of nine UVa’s centers, said Yvonne McHorney, administrator for UVa for renal services and ambulatory care.

The interest in opening the center in Altavista was spearheaded by the Wilson’s petition, she said, and ultimately driven by the numbers of patients who needed easier access in the area surrounding the Campbell County community.

“There were a lot of patients in that area — quite a few in Lynchburg that lived in Altavista,” McHorney said. UVa also has a 45-station center in Lynchburg on Clifton Street and a smaller facility in Amherst.

The need for more dialysis centers locally follows a trend across the country as the nation’s population ages, McHorney said.

Dr. Lawrence Moffatt, nephrologist with UVa Altavista, said Central and Southwest Virginia have a high number of people with end stage renal disease — those needing kidney dialysis.

The aging population, he said, “is leading to more kidney disease being uncovered.”

In the past, having an 80-year-old on dialysis was thought to be outrageous, but it isn’t now.

“The longer we live the more likely the loss of renal function,” Moffatt said. If a person also has atherosclerosis, diabetes, high blood pressure and other disorders, plus the age-related decline, then dialysis becomes an option as that loss of function reaches a certain level.

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